


Webcam

by Marasa



Category: Twenty One Pilots
Genre: Alternate Universe, Ambiguous/Open Ending, And disgusting, Blood, Chat rooms, Dark, Dissociation, Disturbing, Gore, Horror, Hypnosis, Internalized Homophobia, Internet Friends, M/M, Manipulation, Masturbation, Murder, Mutilation, Online Gaming, Simulation, Suicide, Supernatural - Freeform, Surreal, Technology, The internet is fucked up, Toxic Relationship, Weird, be careful with this one, forest, i warned you, strange
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-29
Updated: 2017-06-29
Packaged: 2018-11-20 19:19:37
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,331
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11341683
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Marasa/pseuds/Marasa
Summary: Tyler shouldn't trust people he meets on the internet.





	Webcam

Her name is Blurry and she’s the reason Tyler doesn’t feel so alone.

They meet in an online game. He doesn’t see her face but she’s funny and has all sort of interesting ideas about life and death and all that philosophical bullshit that he doesn’t care about but only pretends to be interested in because he wants this budding friendship to be something more.

Tyler talks to Blurry for some time about his favorite tv shows and tries to downplay the amount of time he spends on the internet and where he spends it.

Tyler feeds his social ineptitude with too many hours on the internet in chatrooms that are too crude and offensive. He keeps quiet even then and eats chips as they talk about the real problems in the world and how someone at work is being a real jackass. The faceless wolves listening to him ramble about minute shit of a douche with a big ego are soon fed what they’ve been wanting all this time.

So and so drops this jackass’s full name, date of birth, physical description, place of work and his address with nothing more said than, “Do with that what you will.”

No rules. No control.

It’s like the Wild West.

Blurry seems above it.

She’s too poetic and wise. She crafts calculated and flowing messages of how as long as humans exist in this dimension, they are damned to be wracked with lust and disease and everything terrible. It doesn’t resonate with Tyler but he wants to hear those strings of words fall from her tongue in real time. Sometimes all the hate and darkness on each forum he frequents gets to him and Blurry is a light in the dark energy that is the Wild West of the internet.

Tyler asks Blurry if she has a microphone.

She does not.

Tyler asks Blurry if she has a webcam.

She does not.

Blurry still doesn’t have a webcam even though Tyler sends her seventy dollars to go get one. The money simply disappears without another word from Blurry about it and when he asks where the webcam is, she types, _I am my words. Nothing more. I think this is fine. Is this not fine?_

Tyler types, “I just wanted to hear your voice.”

Blurry types some more about the ramble that is the human life. Life, death, suffering.

“Can we play Shootout Heroes?” Tyler interrupts in a long block of text.

Blurry’s rant dies out and she invites him to play the computer game on her server.

They don’t talk about the seventy dollars she took from Tyler or talk anymore about the horrendous reality humans are subjected to. Instead, Tyler talks about the latest episode of his favorite show that aired last night. The main character was locked in a basement and tortured by a masked figure who may or may not be someone he was hooking up with on a dating website.

Blurry says she saw it too.

They both can’t wait for the finale.

 

*** * ***

 

Blurry and Tyler watch the finale of their favorite show together.

He has a bag of candy next to him and a smile on his face. The show starts and although he can’t see her, Tyler imagines Blurry and him on the bed side by side, watching together. But Blurry isn’t beside him; she’s in the white box that is their private chat.

“I’m so excited,” Tyler says as the title cards pop up on the livestream of the show. “I watch a lot of T.V. shows, but this is, like, my first viewing party. This is a viewing party, right?”

Blurry sends him a smiley face emoticon.

Tyler tells Blurry that he never had any sleepovers or anything when growing up, that no one has ever liked anything he likes, that no one has ever wanted to share time with him like this. He smiles as the camera zooms in on their main character still chained to a chair, just as we left him last week.

_That’s sad._

“Yeah! I honestly don’t know how he’s gonna get out of this one,” Tyler says as he drools over a handful of gummy candy.

_It’s sad no one wanted to ever spend time with you._

That’s not what he was expecting. Is it really that sad? He guesses so. It’s not like Blurry can see him but Tyler’s light smile disappears as he makes connections about memories he doesn’t want to dwell on. He voices his worries because he thinks if anyone would understand, it would be Blurry.

“I guess I wasn’t a normal kid,” Tyler says. The main character on his laptop screen tries in vain to break the handcuffs holding him hostage to the chair in the dingy basement. “I think I wanted to be normal but I couldn’t be. I didn’t have friends. No one ever talked to me.”

_Are you ugly?_

Tyler doesn’t know how to answer. He pauses before taking his mouse and dragging his cursor over to the camera icon on the bottom right of the chat box he has open. He clicks it and suddenly his image is being broadcast to a stranger over the internet.

Tyler doesn’t smile, doesn’t even look at the camera. He keeps his eyes on the three throbbing dots that signify Blurry typing her answer.

_I think you’re not bad looking._

“I think it was my personality,” Tyler says. “It still is my personality.”

_Why would you want to be friends with anyone anyway? People are overrated._

The main character breaks out the handcuffs and hurries up the stairs to the basement door that will lead him to freedom. They both go quiet as they watch, breath halted as they await him to escape. The basement door opens and there’s a crash and it goes black. The main character opens his eyes again and he’s back in the chair. It’s been three days and the last scene was just a hallucination. A ding and a new message appears on the right of his screen.

_You’re my friend._

Tyler smiles.

 

*** * ***

 

Tyler finds out Blurry isn’t a girl.

At first he’s upset. Grossed out. He isn’t homophobic but the thought grosses him out, all those in-chat discussions getting to him.

He wonders if all that pining and furious masturbating late at night to the thought of a girl with a beautiful smile and dark hair that he had imagined up to be Blurry makes him gay. He feels preyed upon, betrayed. He’s shaking behind his computer with his heart beating fast. He can feel his pulse throb in his wrist.

_I never said I was a girl._

Tyler reads the message, panics and shuts his laptop.

Tyler doesn’t talk to Blurry for a few days.

Without Blurry, Tyler is reminded just how much life sucks. No one talks to him. No one acknowledges him. It’s more silent without the incessant dings coming from his laptop that tell him someone is sending him messages. His anger and anxiety turns to self-aimed guilt because Blurry never did say he was a girl. It was Tyler that was trying to be smart and connect the dots.

Tyler opens his laptop three days later and sends Blurry a message:

_Idc if your not a girl_

Tyler waits in anxiety as Blurry sends him a free code for an online game called “Cyber War”. Tyler plays it with Blurry all night.

He doesn’t feel so alone anymore.

 

*** * ***

 

Tyler lays on his stomach atop his comforter, head propped up as he rambles on to Blurry just how much of a bitch his mother is being while they watch a rerun of their favorite tv show.

His camera is on and all he does is ramble but the responses he gets are black text against the white of a lonely chat box attached to the right hand side of the application.

“Are you deformed?” Tyler says with a squint of his eyes.

When he says this, Blurry sends a comment about his mother and then follows it almost immediately with a question mark that signals his confusion at the sudden shift in topic.

“That's why you don't have a facecam,” Tyler says. “‘Cause your face is mangled. Crime of passion- someone poured acid all over your face. Or you were just born with it,” Tyler muses.

“No, wait. You had a pet chimp and it mauled you maybe.” Tyler smiles as he stares a black box con  screen where a suspected deformed man waits on the other side. His smile disappears when an image of Bubbles the Chimp pops up on his screen in a new webpage.

“Wait-” Tyler narrows his eyes, “how'd you do that?”

_I'm good with computers._

Another picture pops up on screen.

It takes a few blinks before Tyler knows what he’s looking at.

It’s a jumbled mess in a single shade of red. As his focus registers, he can make out the faint glimmer of white, the distinct round shapes of something higher up, the pieces of white at the bottom. What _is_ that? Tyler’s heart beats faster in his chest as he registers a head with it’s face half-ripped off to reveal the layer of thin muscle that covers the front of a skull.

“What the fuck?” Tyler whispers and physically pulls back from the screen.

“Is that real?” he says and leans in a bit closer. He decides he doesn’t care if it’s real or not- it’s disgusting. “Get that off of there. I don’t want to see it.”

Tyler’s eyes are shut as he hears his heart in his ears. When he opens his eyes again, the black box is back.

“W-Was,” Tyler stutters, “was that you?”

_No._

There’s a pause and another window pops up on his computer. It’s a article from a podunk town in Kansas: PET CHIMP MAULS AREA WOMAN, LEAVES FACE IN PIECES

“Shit,” Tyler whispers. “Where did you find that?”

The window open with the television show closes and up another window is pulled, his cursor flying around his laptop like it’s possessed. Into the url, Blurry types from his side and a site filled with gore and hard to look at images fill his screen.

They spend all night on Shock.com, a website that is the universal hub of all gorey photos that should burn in Hell. Tyler feels queasy multiple times during their time together.

“This one's the worst, this one's the worst.” He squeezes his eyes shut as to shut out the image of a man after a bombing with no lower jaw and no fingers titled “HAND MITTS, NO SENSE.”

There's silence and then a beeping coming from his computer signaling a slew of incoming messages. It takes effort to peek open his eyes and actually face the image again.

_Look._

“I don’t want to,” Tyler says.

When he opens his eyes fully again, the website is gone and the television show is back to streaming, as if nothing had ever happened. Blurry leaves him alone to replay those images in his mind. Tyler wonders how such a poetic and smart guy could have found a site like that.

 

*** * ***

 

Tyler bites his pinky as he watches a giraffe wander its pen.

The livestream is featured on every video service imaginable and Tyler and Blurry find themselves succumbing to the image of a pregnant animal biding indeterminate time. The chat attached to the left of the video is chock full of disgusting comments that would make the Detroit Zoo shit their pants and hide their beloved animals from the scrutinizing eye of the internet ever again. The comments aren’t warranted but they’re there anyway.

Hate is always like that. Tyler thinks it's stupid. But it doesn't matter what he thinks about it- it'll still be there. Those are the facts.

Tyler kind of wishes he was a pregnant animal so he could harvest the thousands of dollars of donations on livestream. Making money on a livestream- Tyler thinks there’s a name for that. Blurry would know all about it.

“Think I could be a cam model?” Tyler asks.

_Do you want to be?_

“Mareena’s drowning in that cash,” Tyler says. Someone donates fifty dollars in between a comment that says ‘die’ and another that says ‘you fuckin’ bad little bitch.’

_You talk about money a lot._

“Because I need it,” Tyler says. “Do you not need it?”

_No._

“You’re rich.”

_No._

“Whatever.”

The giraffe stomps in the pen, swishing her tail behind her. The chat is going crazy from excitement never mind the fact she’s been in the same position for the past hour.

“I'm done with this,” Tyler says. He eyes a video of a man kneeling in front of a tigers cage; the title reading, THE TRUE NATURE OF BIG CATS!!!!

Tyler drops his hand from his mouth and uses it to scroll to the side of the video and select it. Mareena disappears to instead start a video of a man at multiple different cages. He turns his back and the big cats stalk after him and leap at him but are held back by the bars of their cages.

There's another ding of a new message in the chat.

_These guys always say the same thing- ‘Big cats aren't pets. They're not to be trusted. They're wild animals of pure instinct.’_

_But they're missing something- if it applies to tigers and panthers, it should apply to humans. Do humans not too react on instinct alone?_

Tyler watches the man look at the camera in front of him with a knowing grin, looking right at the audience as a black panther creeps down the trunk of a large tree and stalk through the grass toward him. The beast gains speed and rockets itself toward him. The whole metal fence sways with the force.

The shot is set up again, a tiger behind him this time. The same result plays out.

_Watch. He turns his back, a show of trust. And what do they do? They stalk up behind him and try to go for him. Tear him apart. And why? It's not because they're bad guys. It's because it's their nature. They can't help it. It's the way they're made deep in their bones._

_And if this is true for animals, it must be true for humans because humans are animals. Humans are not to be trusted. They are animals of pure instinct. Humans will do away with you if they want. They'll jump on your back the minute you're not looking and eat you._

The conversation makes Tyler strangely uncomfortable.

“Are you not to be trusted?” Tyler laughs lightly. It's strained and forced.

Blurry doesn’t answer.

_Want to know what I think? They're all instinct, but somehow, I feel like those animals get joy out of killing._

Tyler doesn’t say anything. They watch the next six minutes of the video in complete silence. When the video ends and the screen turns black, Blurry sends him a message.

_You watch strange porn._

It’s like Blurry’s been stewing on this for the past six minutes. Tyler tries not to panic.

“Have you been spying on me?” Tyler says.

Nothing.

“You said you were good with computers,” Tyler tries to reason. “Have you been spying on me?”

_Yes._

Tyler reads and then rereads the statement with his heartbeat quickening.

“What do you want?” Tyler tries to keep his voice level.

_Nothing._

“You don’t do this for no reason,” Tyler smiles mirthlessly. “You’re going to tell people.”

_No. It’s just an observation. A funny one at that._

“Why are you doing this?”

_I’m trying to see if you’re special. And I think you are._

Tyler doesn’t know what that means.

“Do you watch me sleep?” Tyler says quietly. His eyes search his own reflection in the black box on his screen where Blurry should be. “Do you look through my webcam when I don't know?”

_Yes._

Tyler swallows roughly. His fingers twitch. A cold chill rolls through him.

“I'm gonna put tape over my webcam," Tyler says. His slick fingers squeeze into a fist.

_You won't._

“Yeah?” 

_You like the attention._

Tyler wants to close his laptop but he doesn’t. Numb and powerless, he clicks the next videos from the same big cat sanctuary guy. He has his arm wrapped in a thick cast a healing gash across the side of neck.

He doesn’t mention how he got it.

 

* * *

 

_There’s a game I want you to check out._

“Is it a multiplayer game?” Tyler asks.

_No._

Blurry sends him a link to download onto his desktop. The nameless appears on his desktop and he clicks it, waiting for some kind of shooting game or something else like what they’ve been playing. All that pops up is a warning on screen saying to not play the game if you have a history of seizures.

The warning cuts to black then cuts to a bright white that dissolves immediately into the first level. Neon pink shapes rest against a neon green backdrop that is so bright it makes him squint his eyes. He waits for instructions or audio, but nothing shows up. There is no X to close out of the window or any help option.

Tyler clicks the first square. It glows.

Tyler clicks the second square a few inches from it.

Level 2 pops up.

It’s now more shapes and a few numbers neon green against a neon pink background.

It's like a memory game or something. Symbols and flashing colors pop up, a game of matching and sequencing.

“What’s the point of this game?

Blurry doesn’t answer.

Tyler continues matching shapes and colors and he suddenly becomes conscious of the finer things in his body. He takes note of how often he’s breathing. Swallowing becomes a conscious effort, as does the production of saliva from under his tongue. More shapes and matches of numbers to pair and he begins to feel overwhelmed in not only the game but in his body. It’s too much for him to keep tabs on, his focus flying from how to breathe to how to play this game.

A flash of red interrupts the usual flashes of neon green and pink he was made used to this entire time. The shade is familiar, though, he can’t quite place it.

“What was that?” Tyler mumbles to himself more than Blurry.

He shakes his head minutely and blinks a little harder, each movement a definitive choice and just another thing to juggle.

Circles match with circles, squares with squares, one line of numbers with another. It’s getting faster although there is no time limit. The flashes of red are beginning to come more frequent. It takes a few times for things to become clear what hides in that red.

In flashes barely one second long, Tyler sees faces of dead people that belong on sites like shock.com and other disgusting websites like that. He hasn’t seen these before but something about it makes him even more queasy. He swallows past an uncomfortable weight lined up in his throat.

Tyler blinks and it feels like it takes a few minutes to open them again. He’s disoriented upon opening his eyes back up.

“I think I just blacked out,” Tyler says.

His fingers move on their own accord as if through muscle memory. Another flash. Another stretch of internal darkness and then he’s breaching back up for air.

“I just blacked out, what the fuck!” Tyler gasps. He’s never had a seizure, never had epilepsy. He didn’t even know he was susceptible. He doesn’t even know if what he’s feeling is a seizure.

The levels seem never ending. They just get longer and more complicated. The colors and shapes and numbers stay the same. Blurry’s lack of messaging makes him even more anxious. There are more flashes of red and then more flashes of black. Over and over it repeats.

“Blurry,” Tyler calls out. His stomach twists. “Blurry, why do these people look familiar?”

Blurry doesn't answer.

“Blurry,” Tyler says, “did you make this game?”

“Blurry,” Tyler says, “I feel sick.”

Tyler ducks his head to his chest and belches hot liquid up onto his bed. It just misses his laptop that’s not turned off from overheating if the temperature of the plastic burning his knuckles is anything to go by.

Blurry is gone.

So is that game.

Tyler still feels like he's being watched.

 

*** * ***

 

_I think you're very interesting._

“No one thinks I'm interesting.”

_I do. I just said so._

“Should I say thank you?”

_If you want. I'll never tell you what to do._

 

*** * ***

 

_Where do you think a soul goes when someone dies?_

“Are you asking if I’m religious?”

_Do you have to be religious to think about what might come after death?_

Tyler doesn’t know how to answer that, so he doesn’t.

“I’m not religious,” Tyler says. “When you die, nothing happens.” He narrows his eyes in thought. “It’s, fuckin’, darkness.”

“What do you think?” Tyler asks.

_I think somewhere exists after death if you want it to._

Tyler hums in thought.

_Do you want it to?_

Tyler looks up. He doesn’t know. Would it be paradise? Would wherever this consciousness be without guilt?

“Did you see me last night?” He says off-handedly. Tyler means did he see him, in bed, with his hand under the blankets and a gasp on his lips.

_Yes._

Blurry is a freak. He’s disgusting. But Tyler feels a little disgusting because for some reason, it’s like he knew Blurry was there. He takes comfort in knowing Blurry is there always watching. It’s a sense of security that pisses him off. He expects nothing less of Blurry. Blurry sees everything. At times, it feels like Blurry is everywhere.

_Does that bother you?_

Tyler doesn’t answer.

“Did you record it?” Tyler asks.

_Yes._

Tyler turns off his computer and tries to figure out why that doesn’t bother him.

 

*** * ***

 

“Get out of the basement and get a job!”

Tyler cringes. His laptop’s on downstairs and he knows Blurry is listening. He always is.

Tyler’s mother waves her hands in front of him as spittle sprays on his front. He wants to tell her about how nervous he gets and wants to admit to her that every fifteen minutes at his last job at that fast food chicken joint, he’d step outside to hyperventilate and throw up his anxiety. That’s why his boss had fired him- a misunderstanding. Tyler wasn’t a drug addict going outside all day to get high. He was plummeting.

Tyler keeps his mouth shut and wonders if Blurry will say something about how much of a loser he is for not having a job or even the balls to stand up to his own mother. Blurry probably didn’t even know he was living in the basement of his mother’s house. It’s a day of revelations.

Another revelation plays on the television in the other room. Tyler's eyes leave his mother so he can look at the screen that shows the local news.

“ _In the case of a missing teen’s investigation, Harold Fenster’s body was found in the woods two miles from his home-”_

Tyler swallows vomit.

“ _He was found with his throat slit. A knife was in his possession as well as his phone with instructions from an anonymous number in regards to a meeting. Whether he knew this anonymous texter is being investigated as well as if this killing was a suicide. More at ten.”_

He leaves his mother to shout at his back as he stumbles over to the basement door. He saw that kid in between shapes and bright flashing colors that he swore would give him a seizure. He was one of the many flashes of red featured in a supposedly real game.

His skin pricks with dots of sticky sweat that burn his skin. Tyler feels like he’s overheating, everything in his head glitching. He sees those patterns of colors again and it feels so soothing but he’s fighting it. Something in him, instinct, keeps him out of his mind and in the world before him so he can not trip down the basement stairs.

He grips the railing with sweaty palms and splinters dig into his hands as he slides down into the darkness below his childhood home. He’s led like a moth to the light of his open laptop, stumbling all the way over shoes and piles of potent clothes. Tyler’s knees hit the side of his bed and he falls forward onto his stomach atop it, head close to the laptop in front of him. The black box is there and the blank chat beside it.

Tyler breathes heavy through his nose as he keeps his chin down but lets his eyes drift up to the cyclops eye that is his webcam. He stares deep within it like he’s trying to see who sits on the other side. But it’s black and he can imagine whatever he wants to exist on the other side.

Tyler’s right hand slides down the comforter further and further until it’s sandwiched between the bed and his lower body. The sound of a zipper resonates through the silent basement.

Tyler imagines a pretty girl with a pretty smile and dark hair. He imagines buying a plane ticket for a girl named Blurry and meeting her at the airport. She would come out of the terminal and he’d be there with open arms and they would kiss. The thought gets him hot for a different reason.

Tyler fists himself faster. His fist slides with sweat and something else his dick dribbles out.

Tyler imagines a guy with a mauled face, torn eyeballs hanging from their sockets and a skelton’s smile. His face is one shade of red and he’s gruesome enough to warrant winces from strangers over the internet when the picture is shown.

Tyler's breathing heavier now and he can see his vague reflection in the black mirror of his laptop screen. He looks like a mess, panting out hot and desperate breath from in between parted lips. Tyler's drooling over his comforter and he won’t break eye contact with the tiny lense above his laptop screen.

A bell chimes.

_Don’t you want to be with me?_

Tyler reads the new message on his screen.

_There’s a place for you here with the rest of us._

It doesn’t make sense to him, out of context and without explanation but his fingers hold tighter and his hips move forward in time with his hand. Below the belt, his body is going crazy.

_Don’t you want to come home?_

Tyler’s chin chafes against the bedspread as he gives his assent.

_Don’t you want to evolve?_

“Y-Yes,” Tyler gasps, “yes, yes, yes, yes.”

_Be something more._

Tyler chokes.

_Ascend._

And Tyler does. His brain swoons with a lack of oxygen that comes with gasping for so long and his vision wanes in bliss as his hips roll for the final few times and his palm goes from damp to sopping wet.

Tyler stills. He looks at the messages again and then back to the webcam.

He can’t see to the other side.

 

 ***** ***** *****

 

Tyler keeps passing out.

He keeps passing out and waking up in random places.

He tells Blurry about this but Blurry says not to worry about it; just play the game and shut up.

Tyler keeps his mind humming with single shades of neon pink and neon green and deep red. He doesn’t flinch anymore when a familiar picture of some missing kids pop up in the middle of the game.

Tyler recognizes them as if he’s known them for all his life. He sees a teenager's yearbook picture that was on the channel five news, a picture of a kid that was reportedly missing. Tyler plays the game that night and sees his mangled body on the forest floor.

Tyler sees the tangle of his braces. Tyler sees the gouges in his skin. Tyler sees the knife in the kids hand. He sees a familiar number on the front of his phone that he just can’t put his finger on.

Tyler doesn’t vomit anymore but he keeps passing out.

He wakes up in strange places.

He can’t stay awake.

Blurry says he’s doing fine.

 

*** * ***

 

Tyler wakes in a forest.

The last thing he can remember is playing that game that keeps calling to him and he feels compelled to play and then everything went black.

He’s standing in the middle of the forest with no memory of how he got there. He looks around. The breeze is refreshing and the cloudy atmosphere is easy on his eyes. Under the canopy of the trees, he’s fine.

There is no one watching him here, no games to play, no internet or mangled bodies that plague him. It’s silent.

A loud beep comes from Tyler’s pocket.

He looks down and jumps as if it tazed him. Tyler fishes into his pocket and pulls out his phone. A message from an anonymous number is displayed on the screen:

_I’ll see you soon._

He knows who it is. He knows who it is and as he looks at the message, he feels like the camera lense is an eye staring into him and ripping him apart.

_Do what you’re there to do._

Tyler squeezes his hands and looks down when he feels the weight of something in his right hand. A kitchen knife. He does things he doesn’t remember, like get here and bring a kitchen knife.

_Don’t stay there anymore. Come live here with the rest of us. Here you don’t die. You’re immortal forever. This is the new world, the real world. Come here._

Tyler bites his tongue. He wants to feel but he can't.

This doesn't feel real.

Things haven't been feeling real for a while.

 _Tyler. Wake_ _up._

The screen erupts in colors of pink and green, a myriad of flashing shapes and coiling strings of numbers and every muscle in his body is tensing.

Blurry is good with computers.

He’s good with bodies too.

Tyler falls on the ground as he seizes up. With every convulsion of his body as he has his seizure, his right hand flails and cuts a little more of his upper torso with a flash of the knife. Tyler can’t move his eyes from the spaces in between the leaves above him as his body is independent of him, hacked with flashing colors and numbers and shapes.

His hand flails and it catches his neck just right and it’s becoming hard to think. He’s not blacking out and that’s a shame because the pain is real.

Tyler's arm isn't his. He wouldn't carve up his body, at least he doesn't think he would. Someone's controlling him.

His stomach hurts, his throat hurts, his whole body is boiling. It's getting hard to breathe. Tyler gurgles and the back splash tastes of iron.

And Tyler knows what comes after this.

He’ll be reported missing. He’ll be found in the woods. He’ll be on the news. He’ll be on a gore website. He’ll be shown to an unsuspecting lurker. He’ll become a part of the cycle that’s been churning for much longer than he ever thought.

He knows Blurry is watching. He should be disgusted and afraid, but he isn't; he can't summon the emotions that are not there.

This is what Blurry wants and what Blurry wants, he seems to get.

Blurry is one of these insects eating the leaves, one of the rodents burrowing in tree trunks, a bird perched on a branch. He’s in the air in every inhale. He’s the math that makes the world.

Under the trees, Tyler can’t decide whether he feels alone. He can't process anything when he's lost in flashing green and pink.

Tyler is not worried about where he’ll wake.

He just knows Blurry will be there.


End file.
